“For example, he has shown us that willpower is like a muscle – we can fatigue it if we overuse it, but we can also strengthen it through time and practise.

“Roy has also provided important correctives when the field of psychology goes astray.

“For instance, he showed us that high self-esteem is not actually a panacea for society’s ills and often causes more problems than it solves.

Dr Baumeister has four decades’ of experience in psychology, beginning his career at Princeton and Duke Universities.

At Duke he was mentored by one of the 20th Century’s most prominent psychologists, Edward E Jones.

“Dr Baumeister’s research has been wide-ranging, and he has answered questions across the psychological spectrum,” Professor von Hippel said.

“He proposed the formula that passion equals change in intimacy, divided by time.

“This is still the best-known formula for explaining the role, and the decay, of passion in close relationships.

“He also conducted some of the most notable work on the difference between living a happy life and a meaningful life, and his work on the role of conscious thought is heavily cited in ongoing debates.”

The researcher also somewhat controversially concluded there is no such thing as a self-defeating urge.

Instead, he argues that self-defeating behaviours are symptomatic of trade-offs, backfiring strategies or escapism.

Dr Baumeister is an author on 25 publications alone in 2015, his most recent of which was Role of self-control in immoral and unethical actions.